Technical Field
The present invention relates to a simulation apparatus that simulates an amount of electric power consumption of a piece of equipment and outputs the amount of electric power consumption thus simulated.
Related Art
Conventionally, a production line is known, which successively processes or assembles electronic components, mechanical components, or the like with the use of a plurality of pieces of equipment. Such a production line is constructed by a method such as the one shown in FIG. 22. First, production steps are designed based on information such as a material, a shape, and components of a product (S100). Next, a production line is determined by introducing and disposing, in accordance with a production capacity, resources (e.g. pieces of equipment, machine tools, carrying means, and personnel) for achieving the production steps (S101). Then, the production capacity is evaluated while actually producing a product on the production line thus determined (S102). In a case where the production capacity is inferior to that estimated in the design stage, the cause of it is investigated, and some sort of improvement is attempted (S103). In S103, for example, the production line is redesigned. Subsequently, the evaluation in S102 is repeated. By repeating S101 to S103 plural times, an appropriate production line is completed.
However, in a case where a production line is constructed by the method shown in FIG. 22, it takes a lot of labor to achieve optimum collaboration of the pieces of equipment prepared based on the design of the production steps. Moreover, it takes a long time to construct an appropriate production line, for example, because of occurrence of the necessity of redesigning the production steps back at the design process. Furthermore, failure to achieve maximum capacities of the pieces of equipment or failure to accomplish the designed production capacity are likely to occur because of occurrence of a standby time, an idling time, or the like necessitated due to collaboration with the other pieces of equipment.
Patent Literatures 1 through 4 propose a method of evaluating a production line by constructing a virtual model of the production line on a computer on the basis of product specification, production conditions, etc. and simulating an entire operation of the production line with the use of the virtual model. Especially, Patent Literatures 3 and 4 propose a method of simulating an operating state of a production line by intentionally changing an equipment capacity in a virtual model and a method of calculating a rate of operation of a production line by using percentages of operation and suspension of each piece of equipment.    Patent Literature 1    Japanese Patent Application Publication, Tokukai, No. 2003-44115 A (Publication Date: Feb. 14, 2003)    Patent Literature 2    Japanese Patent Application Publication, Tokukai, No. 2008-234176 A (Publication Date: Oct. 2, 2008)    Patent Literature 3    Japanese Patent Publication, No. 4247083 (Publication Date: Apr. 2, 2009)    Patent Literature 4    Japanese Patent Application Publication, Tokukai, No. 2009-157673 A (Publication Date: Jul. 16, 2009)